


Haunted

by MrTobyWednesday



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Werewolves, mlm author
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 01:36:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5028622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrTobyWednesday/pseuds/MrTobyWednesday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kit is an open book, always; Jasper, like some brooding supernatural teenager out of a young adult novel, is unreadable when it really counts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haunted

**Author's Note:**

> short story written for my creative writing class.

Wolves are Kit’s favorite animal; they’re powerful, highly intelligent, and incredibly beautiful creatures. He’s watched every documentary, read every book about them he could get his hands on; what he’s found over the years still stocks his shelves full. He even spent a lot of his downtime as a child sitting at library computers, reading articles about population numbers and pack movements. The maps on his bedroom wall are covered in long, winding red lines as he’s followed numerous studies tracking family units and packs. Some dwindled in numbers over the years or disappeared entirely; some moved north or south, closer to or further from people. He’s almost eighteen now and some of the packs are almost older than he is. Off to the side, he pins a map of the town to his wall – it’s printed on a normal sheet of paper, unlike his sprawling fabric maps of the U.S. everywhere else – and draws three little red dots by different areas, labelled _Jasper_ , _Nico_ , and _Alex_. While Nico’s and Alex’s dots are both placed on streets, Jasper’s dot is far off to one side, in an empty expanse labelled _woods_ in the same red color. It’s jarringly simple compared to the complex details and full color surrounding the sheet of printer paper. Kit hesitates before adding another dot next to Jasper’s and labelling it _William_ , but he just makes a scrunched unhappy face, sighs, and crosses the name out.

Will’s death still rubs raw, his absence like salt in the wound when Kit looks at the paper map; nobody’s been the same after losing him and, not long after, they all drifted apart. Nico and Alex took up residence as far away from Will’s old cabin as they could. They found themselves human friends and human jobs to keep them occupied and forward-moving. Kit doesn’t blame them for preferring modern homes with modern conveniences to the cold reclusiveness of an old, empty woodland cabin. Even Jasper, who refuses to stray far from the cabin for long, says it feels lonely – haunted. It’s the most he’s ever said about losing Will.

Kit grimaces and looks away from the maps on his wall when his mind drifts inevitably to Jasper. He’s still stuck wallowing in a past he was more attached to than any of them, and as much as Kit hurts, he can’t imagine how painful it was for Jasper to lose his father. Family may run deeper than blood, but Jasper grew up in that cabin, in those woods; Nico and Alex came into the picture late, and Kit much later still. Will had been like a father to all of them, but he didn’t raise them. Jasper had him for sixteen years – and then suddenly he was just _gone_ , without even a chance to say goodbye.

That cabin, Will’s cabin, is all Jasper has left of his father. He doesn’t leave, not for long; at most he’ll sneak into Kit’s room, into Kit’s bed, when he needs the comfort and the company. Nico and Alex need the space, the distance – Jasper needs a closure he’ll never get. So he stays, and Kit doesn’t ask why, doesn’t push him to move on. As much pain as he’s in while surrounded by sixteen years of his life – and the trauma and turmoil that had ended Will’s and nearly his own, too – leaving it all behind is worse.

At least, that’s how Kit reasons it. Jasper, in all his stubbornness, refuses to talk about anything – even to Kit. The most anyone will usually get is _we never got the blood stains out of the rug_ or _I’m still sorry I bled all over your new dress, Alex_. Kit, sometimes, will get a mumbled _it won’t happen again, I swear_. No significant breakthroughs, not a single _it makes me feel…_ , or even an _it still hurts_. (And there’s no _I won’t let that happen to you, Kit,_ but Kit knows it anyway. It goes unsaid, but Kit can see it in his eyes: Jasper can’t lose someone else he loves.)

And then suddenly a loud rapping at his window wrenches Kit from his thoughts, making him nearly jump out of his skin. When he turns to look he’s greeted by Jasper’s grinning face, covered in cuts and scrapes and half-formed bruises. The soft light from Kit’s desk lamp casts a subtle yellow glow on Jasper’s face and hair. Kit huffs and opens the window for him, feeling the cool night air tickle his skin. For just a moment, Kit can almost forget.

“Sometimes I wonder if you’re afraid of using stairs,” he reprimands, but Jasper smiling just makes him smile, too. He steps back as Jasper climbs through the window and dusts himself off. Jasper’s clothes – just ill-fitting sweats and a hoodie – are dirty and torn up. He’s all dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes, but some of the scratches are bright red on him. “What happened to you?”

“Didn’t see a whole patch of thorns while I was tracking dinner. Took a pretty hard fall through it,” Jasper replies as he kicks his shoes off and gets comfortable on Kit’s bed. He speaks with an air of nonchalance toward his condition that would worry Kit if he didn’t know any better. A sentence like that is far from the new definition of weird that Kit’s had to adopt in the past year.

Kit laughs and shakes his head, sitting beside Jasper and looking over to the town map on his wall. His voice, then, betrays more than he’d like, the tightness of it not lost on either of them. “I guess as long as you’re coming back to me in one piece, I can’t complain.”

Jasper follows Kit’s gaze and spies the crossed out name, frowning. “It was just a bunch of thorns. I wouldn’t do that to you again,” he says with a seriousness that pulls Kit’s attention back to him. Blue eyes meet brown, and they both sigh. “One near-death experience is enough for me, Kit.”

Kit swallows the lump in his throat and fakes a smile. Images of Jasper, more beast than boy and bleeding out on the floor of Will’s cabin, flash in his mind. He can still hear Alex’s crying, too, if he lingers on the thought too long. He looks away from Jasper again, suddenly very interested in the carpet. “Are you sure? I could go for another adrenaline rush, honestly.”

“We could always rob a bank instead,” Jasper offers, and Kit laughs – really laughs – which makes Jasper laugh, too. Ever since they met, the banter would come easily to both of them; Kit hides behind sarcasm and Jasper counters him, keeps him grounded. Their back-and-forth is what kept Kit together when he patched Jasper’s wounds up all those months ago. Or tried to, anyway. He tries not to look at the bite scars peeking out from the neckline of Jasper’s hoodie.

“Not that it would work. You’re all bark and no bite,” Kit says distractedly. Jasper pulls Kit with him and lays back on the bed, not caring about his cuts and scrapes. They’re small enough to heal on their own, probably. Kit rests his head on Jasper’s chest to listen to his heartbeat and his slow, steady breathing. Jasper pets his hair and lets him think, the heat of his body combating the draft of cool air coming in through the window.

To this day Kit still can’t pinpoint exactly when they became an item – they’d always been close, but never really named or defined it. They still don’t have pet names, still don’t call each other “boyfriend” or “partner” or “lover” or anything equally embarrassing. Being together was – is – just a simple truth for them, a constant they cherish in a life as hectic as theirs has been.

He does remember the day Jasper told him he’s a werewolf, though. He remembers thinking it was a joke and laughing in Jasper’s face, remembers thinking Nico and Alex were both in on it, remembers when Jasper finally decided to just _show_ him. He remembers Will, too, kicking back with a beer like he was ready to watch a shitshow. (He was disappointed when all Kit did was throw up. He took it well, otherwise. Said: “You’re the fucking _wolfman_ ,” then: “You’re the _fucking_ wolfman.”)

Kit thinks back on Jasper’s confession every time he sees any of them shift. Jasper’s shifts are nothing like the movies. There’s no pain, no blood, no screaming, no slow, horrific process of bones breaking and reshaping. It’s not controlled by moon phases or triggered by anger and aggression, but Jasper’s own will. It happens because he _wants_ it to happen, because it makes him feel whole. Nico and Alex used to be the same way, but now Kit’s sure they haven’t shifted in months. He doesn’t know if that means it’ll hurt when they do, or if a change will eventually force itself, but he tries not to think about it.

Jasper’s shift is quick, fluid, practiced. It’s over in a minute: His limbs lengthen, fur grows in dark all over, his chest and shoulders narrow and pull forward, and within the same sixty seconds a wolf is standing where Jasper had been. He’s huge, with black fur and gold eyes, gaze intense and locked with Kit’s as his body still thrums with energy from the shift. Wolf-Jasper is bigger, denser than a real wolf, and the awe-inspiring beauty that always captured Kit’s interest since childhood is at the same time terrifying. Kit’s scrawny, short, and very much human body just looks fragile in comparison; he nearly pissed himself the first time he made eye contact with wolf-Jasper. Boy-Jasper is already imposing when he wants to be, but looking into those bright yellow wolf eyes scared the shit out of Kit something awful, at first. He loves wolves, and Jasper’s thick coat and piercing eyes are impressive and striking, but werewolves were never on his radar before he met _four_ of them. In the same _week_.

What a life he’s led.

Kit shudders suddenly, and he feels Jasper’s hand on his back to steady him. He shifts a little and settles more comfortably against Jasper’s side. How does he expect to get used to watching not one, but three werewolves shift right in front of him? He still can’t watch every time, has to break that eye contact wolf-Jasper always has with him and wait for his heart to stop pounding in his ears. It’s remarkable and chilling and it makes Kit feel so, so frailly human.

And every time, it just makes him think of the night he, Nico, and Alex found Jasper half-shifted and half-dead in Will’s cabin. Will was nowhere to be seen, and they didn’t waste time looking for him when Jasper was bleeding out on the living room floor. Later they found him and the werewolves who attacked Jasper six miles down the river, dead. Jasper never told anyone what happened, but they all knew Will chased them down after dragging Jasper to the cabin. Risking his life for his son is just something Will did. Nico, Alex, and Kit all have different theories ranging from inter-pack violence (Alex and Nico, being newcomers, were uninvolved with any bad blood), to Jasper pissing off a group of passers-through (as he was prone to doing), to Jasper being the easiest way to exact revenge on Will (who had, in his younger days, been very much a hellraiser).

“…it. Kit. Earth to Kit.”

Kit blinks a couple of times and lifts his head to look at Jasper, who’s giving him a concerned look that makes his stomach flip. He hates seeing that face. He deserves it, though, after the direction his train of thought just veered in.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “What’s up?”

“You’re too quiet. Are you alright?”

Kit wants to say _no, of course not_ , but he just nods. Jasper can see through it, though – he always does, even when Kit’s all smiles and sarcasm. They’re both alike, in ways; neither are fond of talking about their feelings, especially on the heavier things they’ve been through. The only difference is that while Jasper can get Kit to talk – easily, too – Kit can never seem to pull anything from Jasper that isn’t entirely avoidant, or indirectly hinting at the problem without _talking_ about the problem. Kit is an open book, always; Jasper, like some brooding supernatural teenager out of a young adult novel, is unreadable when it really counts.

He should change that, probably.

So he leans up on his elbows, looking at Jasper seriously. “Actually, there is something that’s been bothering me.”

“Yeah?” Jasper bristles like he’s in trouble.

Kit worries his lower lip with his teeth, trying to word it as delicately as he can without scaring Jasper further into whatever shell he’s built around himself. “I just… It’s really…” He sighs, giving up on delicate and going for direct. “You don’t talk to me. Why?”

The gravity behind Kit’s words, the look in his eyes that says _you can’t get out of it this time_ , makes Jasper pause. He works his mouth around a response, but stays quiet. Kit can’t quite read his face; he can recognize the pain that’s always there in the way he knits his brows together and doesn’t quite make eye contact, but that’s it. Then his face falls and Kit briefly thinks he looks like a little lost puppy.

“I just…,” he finally manages, “I don’t know. It’s hard.”

“I can’t just work off of what I think goes on in your head,” Kit says. “I know you well enough, but I can’t just keep… _Guessing_. You need to talk to me.”

Jasper looks away then, and Kit watches how his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, finally sees something flicker in his eyes that isn’t just grief. He still can’t pinpoint exactly what it is – regret? – but it’s a start. The tiniest start, but even baby steps can get them both _somewhere_.

“I’m sorry,” Jasper says, voice hushed. Then, “It’s easier, I guess. Not talking about it. About anything.”

That’s something Kit knows all too well; it’s always easier, at first, to just bottle things up and ignore them. But then, eventually, it blows up fantastically. He’s only surprised Jasper hasn’t reached a low like that in all the months he’s ignored his own emotional distress.

Unless he _hasn’t_ ignored it. Not when he’s alone, away from Kit, away from Nico and Alex. Haunted by sixteen years of Will’s life with him.

Realization dawns on Kit then.

“The cabin,” he says. Jasper tilts his head, confused. “Is that why you still stay at the cabin? You should’ve had at least _one_ breakdown, by now. I’ve had three.”

Jaspers sits up suddenly, uncomfortable. Kit sits up with him and takes his hand, squeezing gently, hoping the contact keeps him grounded. Kit almost wants to stop probing him, the way Jasper just looks so distressed and sick. Seeing him upset and ready to run like this is exactly why Kit never pressed him before.

“It’s okay,” Kit assures him. A beat. He adds, “Or it will be.”

Jasper just sighs, and the complete exhaustion he finally lets himself show makes him look years older. “I ripped the rug apart last week. Gave up on trying to get the blood out.”

Kit kisses his shoulder. “It’s alright. It was an ugly color anyway.” He ventures, “Will was terrible at interior design.”

Jasper laughs, then, and the sound is so bitter Kit regrets saying anything. He leans his forehead against Jasper’s shoulder and is about to mumble an apology when Jasper chokes down a half-formed sob.

“Fuck,” he swears, and Kit lets go of his hand, instead snaking his arms around Jasper’s middle. “I fucking miss him, Kit.”

Kit’s heart aches at how utterly broken Jasper sounds, and he half wishes he didn’t push Jasper to make this kind of progress. Half wishes, though.

He needs this. They both do.

Then Jasper turns in Kit’s arms, buries his face against Kit’s shoulder, and pulls him over into his lap. A surprised protest dies in Kit’s throat when the floodgates open and Jasper’s crying, repeating those words over and over again like they’ll bring Will back if it hurts enough.

They both know that won’t happen, so Kit readjusts himself in Jasper’s lap and holds him. Jasper’s shoulders shake and he can’t breathe between his sobs, can’t see through all the tears and this – this is _not_ what Kit was expecting. He was expecting Jasper to stay guarded, and having to wear him down over a period of days, weeks even. He was definitely not expecting Jasper to respond like this, or for things to escalate so quickly.

Kit realizes just how badly Jasper’s needed this.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he means it. “I wish I could bring him back.”

Jasper’s voice is shaky and, against Kit’s shirt, muffled. He manages a full sentence that, miraculously, isn’t broken up by sobs. “Fuck, Kit. It’s not your fault.”

Kit just holds him, petting his back and hair and sides, until he finally tires himself out. Open sobs die down into weak, pathetic sniffles, and Kit knows Jasper is embarrassed by the display.

“You’re alright. I’m here.” He kisses Jasper’s cheek and Jasper looks so close to a smile that Kit feels like maybe, just maybe he didn’t fuck up as bad as he originally thought in pushing this conversation off.

“I’ll buy you a new rug. We can see Nico and Alex sometime. Things will get better.” _It’ll start to hurt less_ , Kit wants to say, but he doesn’t. “We can see his grave if you want.”

Jasper just nods and pulls Kit back down to the bed. His eyes are red-rimmed and puffy, nose snotty, but Kit kisses him anyway.

“I love you, okay? We’ll get through this.”

Jasper looks at Kit like he’s his whole world. “Yeah... Okay. I love you, too.”

“You better, wolfman.”

Jasper laughs, and Kit does, too.


End file.
